The present invention relates generally to the field of devices and apparatus to aid handicapped persons, and more particularly to a device for aiding handicapped persons who are dependent on wheelchairs or crutches for mobility in opening and closing doors before and after moving through the doorway.
It is generally recognized that handicapped persons face a variety of problems in dealing with the normal situations of everyday living that fully functional handicapped persons never encounter, although it is doubtful that the average fully functional handicapped person realizes the extent to which handicapped persons with certain types of handicaps are impaired or impeded by their disability from performing some of the most rudimentary tasks of daily life. Of course, it will be apparent that the extent to which a handicapped person is prevented from performing a particular task may depend largely on the type of handicap involved, since the vicissitudes of handicaps is such that each presents its own set of unique problems and challenges which the handicapped person must overcome as best as he can in his effort to be as fully functional as possible.
The present invention is primarily directed toward addressing a particular problem faced by handicapped persons who are confined to a wheel chair, although it also has significant utility in aiding handicapped persons who depend on crutches for mobility. While it is generally recognized that handicapped persons confined to a wheel chair will encounter certain problems that will restrict or impair their mobility, it is believed that the average handicapped person does not appreciate the many and varied relatively small but certainly not insignificant ways in which this mobility is greatly restricted or at least impaired by the need to perform certain tasks which either cannot be performed, or which can be only with great difficulty, by a handicapped person confined to a wheel chair. As a former engineer for a large manufacturer of office and other commercial products who has recently become dependent on a wheel chair and crutches for mobility, I have become intimately familiar with the great variety of problems encountered by such persons and have given considerable thought to developing practical solutions to these problems, from which the present invention emanates.
One of the most common tasks which must be performed by any person in the course of everyday living is that of opening and closing a door prior to entering or after leaving a room. It is quite obvious why a closed door must be opened, and there are numerous reasons for the necessity of closing a door after entering or leaving a room, for example, when security is necessary, privacy is desired, children or pets must be confined, the room is heated or air conditioned, various forms of noise or other sound, must be excluded from outside or confined within the room, and many others which can be imagined. Suffice it to say that in today's society the ability to open and close a door is such a fundamental necessity that few people ever consider the adverse consequences of not being able to do so. Yet, as will be more fully explained below, it is either very difficult and in some instances virtually impossible for a handicapped person in a wheel chair to open and close a door prior to and after moving through the doorway.
Although there are several possible situations which a person in a wheel chair or on crutches can encounter in connection with negotiating a doorway depending upon the architecture of the doorway (and these will be further discussed below), the most difficult situation encountered is that in which the he wishes to pass through the doorway in a direction opposite to that in which the door swings, or in other words, entering a room in which the door swings outwardly or leaving a room in which the door wings inwardly. In either of these situations, the handicapped person must approach the closed door in a forward or partly angled direction until he can reach out sufficiently far to grasp the door knob without running the risk of falling out of the wheel chair or losing his balance on the crutches. When he has reached and turned the door knob, he must then pull the door toward the wheel chair or himself, and he must also move backward until there is sufficient clearance between the wheel chair or the crutches and the arcuate path followed by the edge of the door while it is opening so that the door clears the front wheels of the wheel chair or the bottom of the crutches. At best this is a difficult maneuver for an agile handicapped person, and may be impossible for an aged, less agile person. Also, as he moves backwards in increments, he must take care not to lean so far forward to reach the door knob that he loses his balance and falls out of the wheel chair.
After the door is fully opened, the handicapped person then again approaches the doorway and begins to pass therethrough, but at this point the back of the wheel chair or the crutches are in the path of movement of the door as it moves toward a closed position, and therefore prevent it being pulled closed as the person moves further through the doorway. A non-handicapped person, at this point, would simply grasp the door knob and pull the door closed behind him as he moves through the doorway, usually by turning slightly while reaching behind to ensure that the door closes just as he passes through the doorway. The problem encountered by the handicapped person, however, is that after passing through the doorway sufficiently far to permit the door to swing shut without hitting either the wheel chair or the crutches, he can no longer reach the door knob or the edge of the door, even by turning around and stretching his arm as far as possible. This maneuver is at best very difficult for a young and adroit handicapped person, and virtually impossible for the more aged and less agile handicapped person. And, as will be seen in more detail below, if the handicapped person attempts to close the door in increments while he is moving through the doorway, he will encounter difficulty both in either simultaneously or alternately propelling the wheel chair or manipulating the crutches through the doorway and simultaneously pulling the door closed, and also from the limitation imposed on the extent of movement of the door before it strikes the rear edge of the main wheels of the wheel chair or one of the crutches, thus further impeding his effort to close the door.
One solution to this problem might appear, at first, to be that the handicapped person can maneuver the wheel chair into a 180.degree. turn, or to turn himself around on the crutches, so that he now faces the door, and then move the wheel chair or walk forwardly until he can reach the door knob to pull the door closed. However, in the average situation, in order to reach the door knob without leaning so far forwardly that he may risk falling out of the chair or losing his balance on the crutches, either at least the forward part of the wheel chair or one of the crutches has moved back through the doorway and is in the room, with the result that the door cannot be shut before it will strike the foot rests of the wheel chair or one of the crutch. The handicapped person must now move the wheel chair or walk backwardly until the front edges of the foot rests or the crutch clear the door frame and then lean forward again to grasp the door knob and pull the door further toward a closed position. He may have to repeat this maneuver a couple of times depending on the width of the door. It will be apparent that this procedure requires considerable effort and dexterity, which even a substantially agile handicapped person may find difficult if not impossible to accomplish.
A relatively common complication added to the situation described above is where the door, by virtue of the architecture of the room and the door way, is free to swing 180.degree. between a closed position and a fully open position, such as where the wall on either side of the doorway is disposed in a plane parallel to the doorway. In this situation, a handicapped person confined to a wheel chair or crutches is faced with the further difficulty that, in order to reach the door knob, he must now reach laterally in the plane of the doorway as well as reaching perpendicularly through the doorway. This maneuver is virtually impossible for any handicapped person with an average size door, and even with a narrow door which is just barely wide enough accommodate the wheel chair, he will still find it especially difficult to now swing the door away from the wall and in the arcuate path necessary to close it without the wheel chair or a crutch being in the doorway and obstructing free movement of the door between open and closed positions.
Although no distinction has been made in the foregoing discussion between the problems encountered by handicapped persons who utilize a wheel chair for mobility and those who depend on crutches, it should be understood that, although the nature of the problems is the same for both types of aid to mobility, the severity of those problems is much greater for the handicapped person in the wheel chair than for the handicapped person on crutches. The principle reasons for this difference is that the wheel chair physically occupies more cubic space then crutches and is usually more cumbersome to maneuver, although the area required for the arcuate path followed by the bottom of the crutches when walking with them approaches, if not equals, the area occupied by a wheel chair. Also, a handicapped person in a wheel chair, being confined to a sitting position in a device having substantially greater mass than a pair of crutches, is much less able to manipulate the wheel chair and position himself appropriately for the task at hand than the standing handicapped person who need only move his crutches. Therefore, in further discussion of the manner in which the present invention solves the foregoing problems and in the detailed description of the invention, emphasis is placed on the applicability of the invention to the handicapped person confined to a wheel chair.